


The Liability

by Snarkcasm_man



Category: The Walking Dead (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ben is 17, Clem is 10 when Lee found her, Deviates From Canon, Doug and Carley live, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-07-28 14:27:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7644520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snarkcasm_man/pseuds/Snarkcasm_man
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn't think he'd make it this far, and most would've agreed with that. Now having  to care for Clementine, Ben reflects on the journey they've taken to get this far.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Reflections

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! For my first story on this site, I wanted to write something that's been in my head for a while. Ben was one of my favorite characters to come out of the game, and his death was quite tragic, so I wanted to give him a better ending. This will be majorly different from what canonically happened, so be prepared. Feedback is welcome and appreciated! This will be the icebreaker chapter, more coming soon.

Ben was sure he'd vomit if not for the fact he desperately wanted to be safe from walkers. The smell of the guts on his varsity jacket was starting to get to him, and his dislike of blood and the dead didn't help.  
He looked at the eleven year old beside him, smeared in a similar fashion with a look of devastation. He wished this had been a dream, but everything so far had been horrifyingly real.  
"Ben?" Clementine said, voice wavering a little. He looked at her, "What is it?"  
She looked down to the ground, "Where are we going?"  
Ben simply sighed, "I don't know."  
Ben took a minute to reflect, thinking about every single event that happened to get the pair where they were.


	2. Brand New Day

The forest was pretty quit, except for the three people walking down one of the many paths. There was a middle aged man wearing a blue jacket, which had MUSIC TEACHER embroidered on the back. Along with him were two high school students. Both had on varsity letterman jackets with SM on the left side and their names on the right. The taller one with messy brown hair and early facial hair coming in had BEN on his while the shorter one with his black hair had TRAVIS.  
"Now Ben, Travis, keep up, we need to get out of these woods before those bastards attack again." Mr. Parker said, keeping a stead pace ahead of the two former students. Travis simply kept his eyes forward, trudging along the forest path, while Ben keep scanning the tree line for walkers or bandits, ready to kill them.  
"Ben, calm down, they're probably still pillaging our old camp for leftovers, we're fine for the moment," Mr. Parker said, looking at the lanky teen. Ben looked at his former music teacher and friend and sighed.   
"Sorry, just on edge, they could be anywhere right now, and that's not including walkers too."  
"I know, I know," Mr. Parker said, "but fear not, we'll hit a road eventually, and when we do we'll be one step closer to---AGHHH." Both the students looked at their teacher and were horrified to see his leg stuck in a bear trap. Thinking quick, Travis undid his belt and wrapped it around Mr. Parker's leg, then tried to move the trap while Ben stood beside him. Another scream tore through the air as they tried messing with the trap, then suddenly footsteps approached them.  
A shorter guy with black hair and glasses dressed in casual military garb, with the name tag Mark attached on the shirt and a older black guy with short black hair and a beard, dressed in a winter coat stopped right in front of them. Mark had a rifle and the black guy had a fire axe.  
"Jesus Christ," Mark said in disbelief.  
"Oh shit! No, please don't kill us, we just want to help our teacher we swear!" Another man wearing a layered shirt, baseball cap and had black hair with a handlebar mustache carrying rifle ran up.   
"Lee, Mark are ya'll all right?" The three men turned back to the group at hand, eyeing Mr. Parker and his trapped leg.  
"Please help us, we-," Ben started but Travis stopped him, "Ben, these could be the same guys who raided our camp, and we barely got away from that!" Ben tried again, "Look just help him and-," Travis stopped him mid sentence again, "Ben shut up, my dad was special forces, I know what I'm doing!"  
The black guy, who they assumed was Lee, spoke up, "Was he bit?"  
"No, he wasn't!" Ben practically shouted, worried that all the noise would bring out the dead or worse.  
"Okay, we'll try our best to get him out," Lee said as Mark moved forward to examine the trap.  
Walker moans started to be audible, and soon they saw a few stumbling toward them from straight ahead.   
"Lee, this trap's been altered, there's no release latch!" Mark said as the mustached man started taking shots at the approaching walkers.  
"Kenny, get the boys back," Lee said as he walked up to Mr. Parker. As Travis and Ben got behind Kenny, Lee looked over their teacher.   
"I'm going to half to cut you out," then, he raised the axe.  
"No, no try the trap again, anything!" Mr. Parker pleaded. Lee ignored this and took the first swing. The scream was loud and bloodcurdling as the blade cut into his leg, and Ben just looked away. As Lee worked on the leg, Ben just tried not to pass out from the screams he heard and the shouts coming from Kenny about the oncoming dead. Several more slow hacks, and Mr. Parker was leg was gone, and then fell he unconscious due to blood loss.   
"He passed out," Lee said, then Mark grabbed him and started running the opposite direction as Travis ran forward to vomit. Kenny followed after Mark, and Ben was ready to go when he saw behind Travis and saw the walkers were almost on top of him.  
"Travis, look out!" Ben yelled, but Lee held him back before he ran out toward him. Travis screamed and tripped, his screams soon dying out as he was devoured by the walkers. As Ben ran with Lee, he realized that this day just got longer, and he figured this was just the beginning.


	3. Welcome to the Family

As Ben ran with the other three men, he hoped that wherever they were going would be able to help his teacher. As his thoughts drifted toward Travis and his gruesome death, Ben found himself lucky to be alive and with people; he hated being alone.

As the forest began to clear, Ben saw a building outside the tree line. When they ran out of the forest and onto the road, Lee shouted, "Open the gate, we've got wounded!" Mark, with Mr. Parker being carried over his shoulders, ran in first, followed by Ben right after. Ben was sure Lee was talking to a lady who walked up and started shouting right after they got in, be he didn't care as he looked over his teacher and the stump that was left when they freed him. Slowly, Mark laid him down on the bed of a pickup truck and joined in the argument with Kenny, and more people came over to see what was going on. Ben thought of what he could do to help, but between everything that had happened, he just needed a minute to process everything . What didn't help was the amount of blood covering his teacher, Mark, and the bed of the truck and Ben just focused on not passing out right there. A woman rushed over, and instead of getting in the way, Ben simply stepped aside to let her work. He heard the lady who'd started talking to Lee and Kenny when they got in start talking in his general direction , "--suppose you guy's have any groceries on you?" Ben looked down, and answered with, "Uh, no." Mark sighed, turned to him and said simply, "Welcome to the family kid." Before Ben had the chance to say anything else, a little girl grabbed his sleeve and pulled, "Come back here and see what I drew." Ben pulled back, but she simply held on and pulled him towards another kid. 

There was a little area where the two had been drawing, and the girl sat him right to her left. "My name's Clementine," she said, beaming at him while holding up a drawing of a field. She had frizzy dark brown hair, and she had a baseball cap with a D on it, probably belonging to some sports team. She was probably Lee's daughter. "I'm Duck!" The boy said, holding up a drawing of a rock, or something similar. He had a doopy smile with short brown hair, and pointed towards Kenny yelling, "That's my dad! He's awesome!" "Hi there, I'm Ben," he said, offering a small smile to the two. Another lady came up, she had straight dark brown hair and was dressed in a bubbly looking jacket. "Hey there new guy, my name's Carley," she said, giving him a sad smile, "sorry for not bringing out the welcome wagon, Lilly is very adamant about not letting more people in." Ben shrugged, "I wasn't paying attention, I was too worried about my teacher." He said, glancing over at the pickup truck they were treating him in. Carley gave him a look and simply said, "Our doc will do the best she can." Ben nodded at that, though he still had a nagging sensation in the back of his head. "Well, let me introduce you to our little group," Carley said, "The lady dressed in the leather jacket who tried throwing you out is named Lilly, the big guy with the constant scowl on his face is Larry, he's by Mark helping build the fence." Ben took a minute to look at the two, seeing Lilly glare as he looked over at her. He simply gulped, "She's terrifying." Carley nodded to that, then continued, " The woman tending to your friend is Katja, she's our resident medic and the guy stringing up bells over there is Doug, he's like our mechanic, and you should know the rest." Ben just stared at the ground. "Have fun." Ben heard Lilly say, and as he looked over, Lee was standing there with some food items. Ben just kept his head down, but then Clementine showed him more drawings she'd done. Ben was sure that someone would walk up and tell him to leave, just to go and find other people to stay with. Lee soon walked up and gave Duck and Clementine some of the food, then moved to talk to him. "Hey, how ya holding up," he said with concern in his voice. "I'm fine, just a bit rattled from that, y'know." Ben replied, looking up at Lee. "Can I get your name? People will be asking soon enough." Ben just nodded, "My name's Ben Paul, I was a senior in Stone Mountain High and played on the marching band." Lee gave him a look, " How old are you?" "I'm seventeen, my birthdays in December." Lee gave a sad look, then turned away to continue handing out food. "My sitter was the same age," Clementine said, sounding a little chest fallen. Before Ben had a chance to question what she meant, Katja called over for Lee and Kenny to come to the truck. Ben assumed the worst.

As he sat there, sad another friend from before had died, a scream broke him from his thoughts. He saw Mr. Parker, re-animated and attacking Lee now, and wondered why they hadn't put a bullet in his head when he died. As Mark missed with the axe, Lee crawled until he fell out of the pickup and onto the ground. As he kept the corpse from biting him, Carley ran up and shot it right in the back of the head. "You said he wasn't bit!" Came Kenny's voice and Ben suddenly realized that they didn't know. "Listen," he began, " it's not the bite that does it, you die and don't destroy the brain, that's just what happens. I've seen people who weren't definitely not bit come back." Everyone stood shocked at this revelation, then seemed to realize it was true with just how fast it spread with all the suicides and accidents that happened in the beginning. As everyone came to terms with this new information, a little bell chimed and a pair of voices became audible.


	4. New Faces

"What the hell was that?" Mark said, getting behind the wall as the two voices talked amongst each other.   
"It worked!" said an excited Doug, "It's my defense system, it can tell where someone's coming and give us a warning through these bells." Doug motioned to the four bells on the wall, and the voices said something that vaguely sounded like 'stuck'. As everyone readied their weapons or just got behind the sturdier parts of the wall, the voices started again and were getting closer.   
Carley aimed her pistol and stood up, "Hold it right there." Now that they were closer, Ben got a better look at these two strangers. They looked like they were in their mid to late thirties, with wrinkles visible below their hairline. The one closest one to the wall had short black hair and a soft smile on his face, while the other one had longer brown hair and what looked like bags around his eyes.   
"We don't want any trouble," Lee said, keeping an eye on the two men in front.  
"Neither do we, me and my brother were lookin' for gas and we saw this place and thought to ask you." The closer one said, a deep southern accent punctuating his words, his brother holding up a gas canister.  
"We can work out a deal," the one holding the gas can said, accent equally thick, "how are y'all doing on food?"  
Ben had no idea what the food situation was since he'd just arrived, but between the low rations Lee had handed out were and the silence that followed the question, he assumed it was bad.  
"Alright, you got a deal." Lee said, looking at the rest of the group.  
"Well, that's great," said the closer stranger, "I'm Andrew St. John, and this here's my brother, Danny." Danny gave a quick wave with his free hand.  
"We could trade some things, and if you want you can come out to our dairy. It's real big, got plenty of food and we've got an electric fence around it, that's what the gas is for."  
"Alright, we'll bring some gas and in return, you give us some food." Lee said, signaling for Kenny to go grab the gasoline they needed.  
"Okay then, everyone can come on down to--," Andrew started, but was quickly stopped  
"Hold on Andrew," Lee said, giving a suspicious look toward him, " we need to make sure the place is safe, so we're not sending everybody in here."  
Andrew simply nodded, "Hey, can't ever be too careful, and you can call me Andy."  
Lee nodded, and went to consult the group about who to bring. 

"Alright, how about I take Mark, Doug and Carley with me for the first trip. Lilly, Kenny, you're in charge of defending this place. Katja, get cleaned up for now, Larry, just do whatever. Ben, keep an eye on the kids." Everyone silently agreed to their respective jobs and moved.  
Ben suddenly felt a lot of responsibility on him and with Lee, Mark and Carley gone, became painfully aware of the glares coming from Larry and Lilly as they moved around. He simply gulped and moved back to the kid's area to keep an eye on them. Duck and Clem had gone back to drawing the minute the conversation with the St. Johns had ended, and simply smiled fondly as the teen moved over.   
"What instrument did you play? You said you were part of a marching band." Ben looked over at Clementine, who simply gave an inquisitive look at him.  
"Oh, well, I played the trumpet. I have since I started freshman year."   
Clementine gave him an amazed look, "Wow, I've can't play any instruments, though I wish I could."  
Ben gave a shrug to that, "It's not too hard to learn one, you should ask your dad to help."   
Clementine froze at that, then gave a confused look, "My parents went to Savannah, I haven't seen the since then."  
Ben was taken back since he had no idea, "So Lee's not your dad then?"   
She just shook her head at the question, "He found me in my treehouse one day, and has taken care of me since. He's really nice, like when he helped Larry by getting him some medicine."  
Ben looked at her, "Do you think Lee will let me stay here?"   
Clementine looked up with a smile, "Of course he will! He always helps people, and he'll want you to stay."  
Ben felt reassured and just kept an eye on the kids as they started coloring and talking.

As Doug and Carley walked up with a basket in their hands, Ben had assumed the deal had gone fine.  
"Ohm my god guus, they havve biscuits! Doug said, crumbs flying out of his mouth as he excitedly talked. Carley simply rolled her eyes at his antics and turned to the group, "The place looks fantastic, almost entirely free of walkers! It looks untouched by everything that's happened. Plus, they offered dinner for tonight and a chance to stay there if we're willing to pull our weight around the place."  
Everybody there murmured in agreement that the place sounded like heaven compared to the hell they'd become accustomed to living in.  
Doug held the basket out, "Everybody take one, there's more than enough to go around." As the original group moved to take a biscuit, Ben stood to the side and looked forlorn. He was hungry and hadn't had anything to eat for days, him and his former group had been raided, and even before that, food was starting to running low. But even then, he didn't want to intrude on them, especially having only just arrived a while earlier.   
"Hey kid, come grab one too! You must be hungry as well." Doug said to Ben, a small smile on his face.  
Ben accepted it, and savored the taste of actual baked bread, something he thought he'd never eat again  
"Alright, let's get everyone together and start makin' our way to this dairy for dinner." Kenny said, addressing the group.  
Lilly spoke up, "What about the motor inn, we can't leave it unguarded."  
"Alright then, Doug, Carley, you two alright with watching the place while go go?"  
The pair in question simply nodded, and gave a goodbye wave as everyone prepared for the short walk ahead of them.

As they left, Clementine started skipping along the forest path. As Ben saw this, his first thoughts went to his little--. He stopped and shook his head, trying to clear those thoughts that he had lingering in the back. He needed to be strong, for them.


	5. A walk through the woods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for no updates, I've been busy with school and everything. Thank you for those just simply clicking on the story, and if you want to leave suggestions or have some criticisms to give, I'm more than happy to hear them.

As Ben walked along the forest path, he was mindful of the ground that was ahead of them. During this walk, he finally started observing the people he might be staying with.

Carley had gotten basic explanations down as Ben looked at the people ahead. Larry was wearing a long sleeve sweater with some dark pants, and judging by his gray hair and wrinkles, was most likely in his sixties. Lily had a leather jacket, with darker clothing and boots accompanied by it.  
Katja had a brown jacket on with a pair of blue jeans with them. Clementine, other than her hat, had a long sleeve dress and slacks, and Duck had a plaid shirt and jeans.  
Ben addressed his own wardrobe, his varsity jacket, jeans, sneakers and hoodie, and realized his old gray hoodie was due for retirement and he'd probably need a new one. But that was a worry for another day as Ben reflected on his situation.

Some would say he was slow when it took him this long to notice what everyone was wearing, but really it was his phobia. He was a hemophobiac, meaning he had a fear of blood. Considering the amount of concentration it took to not pass out on the spot from everything that had happened with Mr. Parker, it made sense to him that he'd missed out on what most people were saying and doing, and what they looked like. He figured he'd tell Lee the next time he saw him.

The walk through the forest was unnerving to say the least. Kenny had his gun out and at the ready as they walked, having been told about bandits in the area by Carley and Doug. Ben simply kept an eye out around him and jumped at any rustling from the leaves and shrubs around him. He wanted nothing more than to be safe within this farm he'd heard about, and to have some people with him so he wouldn't be alone. 

Clementine had stopped skipping and was now looking at him.  
"So..." He said, trying to break the awkwardness of the situation, "How old are you?"  
"I'm ten right now, but my birthday should be coming up soon!"  
"Oh, huh." Was all he replied with.  
"Are you from around here?"  
Ben sighed, and answered,  
"No I'm from Stone Mountain, my family's there, but I can't get back."  
Clementine looked at him with big sad eyes,  
"It's okay, I still don't know where my parents are. They left to Savannah, and the only thing I have of them is my hat and walkie."  
They simply walked in silence.

As they walked onto the farm, it was like Carley had said, almost untouched by the apocalypse around them. As they walked up, Lee and Mark were standing with Andy and Danny with a chubby woman standing near. Mark looked hunched over.  
"Howdy Y'all" Came from a slightly situationally oblivious Kenny.  
"Oh my god, Mark!" Came a more focused Katja.  
As everyone got a clear look at Mark, they saw an arrow stuck in his right shoulder.


End file.
